I'm Not Chinese: The Journey From
Resentment to Reverence
Coming soon in October 2014
"The first thing you need to know is I’m not Chinese. My name is Raymond Wong and I stopped being Chinese at the age of five."
Raymond Wong wants to forget his past: a charming, conniving, and controlling Chinese mother, a father who hasn’t so much as written him a letter in twenty-eight years, a stepfather who never sees him as a son, a childhood rife with ridicule and bullying from American kids, and the pain of being an outcast in his own family. Raymond goes back to Hong Kong with the mother he has always pushed away, a woman who represents everything he wants to disown. He meets a father he doesn’t recognize and can’t talk to because they speak different languages. He encounters a people and a country as foreign as the Cantonese he can no longer comprehend.
I’m Not Chinese: The Journey from Resentment to Reverence is about a man who has spent his life running from his culture, his family, himself—and what happens when he is forced to stop running.
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Reviews
"This book made me assess my own relationship with my parents, wondering what important history I have missed because of my own closed eyes."
Katherine Pickett
Owner of Pop Editorial Services and author of Perfect Bound: How to Navigate the Book Publishing Process Like a Pro
"I’m Not Chinese is a deeply personal portrait full of heart, humor, and compassion."
Steve Brannon
Editor, Small Print Magazine
Discussion Questions
1. What resentments are evident in this narrator from the prologue?
2. In this memoir the narrator embarks on a trip to Hong Kong and mainland China. What inner journey does he take on?
3. At the book’s beginning, the narrator is ambivalent about Quyen, the woman he is dating. What shifts his views about relationships and marriage?
4. Take a look at the chapter, “Hate." What is the implication about human nature?
5. Go to the chapter, "Reverence." What is the narrator’s epiphany?
6. A motif or repeating theme weaves through this memoir. It relates to how the mother sees Hong Kong and mainland China. What is this motif?
7. In the chapter, "Wounds," why is the narrator upset?
8. The narrator’s mom married to stay in America. How do you view her actions in the context of this book?
9. What does this story suggest about the plight of African Americans who to some extent still live in two worlds, one white and one black?
10. If we are a country of immigrants, what does it mean to be an American?